Review of Em busca de sentido, by Viktor Emil Frankl

Abstract

Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist of Jewish origin who lived from 1905 to 1997. The central theme of the psychotherapeutic school he founded is the discovery of the meaning of life as a way of facing existential frustration and noogenic neurosis. Meaning is a core concept of existential analysis because it is at once the support and the explanation for fundamental questions of phenomenological psychology, such as carrying out a mission and finding a reason to live in accordance with the innermost core of one's personality. For phenomenologists, to find a reason to live is to identify that innermost core, which secures the satisfaction of living and marks out the singularity of existence. The discovery of existential meaning is the most important methodological element in facing the emptiness that follows from the existential frustration of our time and from its consequences: contemporary drug addiction, depression and violence. Finding meaning does not amount to placing something arbitrary in life to fill it, for meaning is a purpose that mobilises the whole person and must be in tune with that person's innermost truths.